Snap out of it. Donald Trump is just the jolt Europe needed. Too long coddled by the US, Europeans should welcome the president-elect’s admonition to stand on their own feet. Stunned by the outcome of the US election, European policymakers have gone in desperate search of silver linings.

There are none. Whatever Europe’s shortcomings as a partner to the US — and there have been plenty — Mr Trump promises to make the world, including Europe, a more unstable and dangerous place. That this approach may encourage Europeans to assume greater responsibility for their own security is all to the good but it does not alter the essential prognosis.

Mr Trump’s foreign policy is a work in progress. Measured by the public statements of the president-elect and his closest advisers, it is shot through with contradictions. America-first isolationism jostles with pledges to increase military spending. The recurring themes, though, are economic nationalism and withdrawal from the global responsibilities the US has assumed since 1945. Mr Trump, whose criticisms of Nato are longstanding, seems clear that allies — whether Japan, the Republic of Korea or Nato members such as Germany, Poland, France or Britain — should look after themselves.